so it took me nearly two and a half months, but now i can finally update. i did a whole new layout (well, sortof, but i'll get to that later) as you can tell. i finally succumbed and set up blogger for one very important reason. no, two. first of all, the computer i'm using is so old and slow that it's a miracle i can get internet explorer open. so i don't have any of my fancy-smancy html and graphic programs avaliable to me. therefore, i have to start a new layout cos i can't update my site with the old one. second reason: blogger is very portable.

that is, i can update the site from any place that has a computer, so it opens up many new opportunities. previously, i could only update from my house. this accessability is very good, because i'm moving into my own apartment in two weeks, and i will not have a computer. thus, no updates. but now i can.

so i guess you're wondering "what the fuck happened?!" well, now i'll explain. my parents kicked me out of the house the first week of december. i won't get into the reasons behind it because i'm not really angry with them anymore, and my decision to stay outside of my house has also been of my own will. we (my parents and i) got into a fight, and my dad made me leave the house. etc. so i went to a neighbour's house to use the phone. i called up james (my now ex-boyfriend; again, i'll explain in a bit.) and asked him to pick me up. he arrived a few minutes later, total night-in-shining-armour (or so i thought.), and brought me over to my friend kathryn's house.

i'm sure i've mentioned her before. any of you who've been reading this site for a while know all about her. she was my best friend when i went to NOCCA two - three years ago, and we've kept in touch ever since, despite our combustable personalities and daily attempts to piss the other off. so i came here (the house where i am currently typing this up), and i've been here ever since.

those first couple of days were very stressful for me. i felt uprooted, confused, abandoned, etc. i didn't know what to do. i missed two days of school (at franklin, that's a big deal.) before i felt sane enough to deal with things. so i called the school. after much debate with the assistant principal, i agreed (mostly under threat of truancy.) to go to school the next day and talk to a social worker with my parents.

very big mistake.

i won't get into the conversation and such, but it was bad. in the end, the social worker's reccomendation was that i stay out of my house until the family started getting counciling together. so i started going to school again, not really wanting to, but not seeing any other choice. i was really attending the school illegally, because kathryn's house is located in metairie. only fifteen - twenty minutes from new orleans, but far enough away to put my residence out-of-district. therefore, if the school found out that i still wasn't living at home (the social worker lied to the assistant principal and told her i'd moved back in with them.), i'd be kicked out.

so, lots of stress for me to deal with. in addition to all of that, james, pulling a complete and total 180 on me, decided to break up with me a week after all of this started. i'm still pissed at him over that. not that he broke up with me, really, but that he had to do it in the middle of all of that, for a stupid fucking reason. he had a problem with the fact that he was two years older than me, because he told me that i was more of a little brother to him than a boyfriend. bah. boys.

anyway, all of this happened right before exam week. needless to say, i bombed. my exams did horrific things to my grades. in the classes that i was barely passing, i failed. in the ones that i was doing all right, the exams brought my grades down to barely passing. the only classes i didn't fuck up in were english and theatre. and, oddly enough, i managed to pull a C in french, even though i was failing it prior to the exam. this was just another thing for me to contend with.

after exams ended, i was off for christmas holidays. a total blessing. i needed a break more than anything else. relations with my parents grew marginally better. my mom even stopped by to give me my christmas presents. this was the first christmas/new year that i've spent some place other than my house. i still don't know how i feel about that.

the christmas vacation also brought about another change. for the first time in a while, i was regularily seeing and talking to jackie. i've never mentioned her before, but she's kat's best friend. they knew each other long before i ever came around. well, when i was still going to NOCCA, kat introduced me to jackie. i hated her from the very start. she was bitchy, opinionated, etc. i thought she was rude, arrogant, someone i didn't want to be around. i don't know if my opinion of her has changed too much now (aside from the not wanting to be around part), but jackie is now one of my really close friends. i find it ironic. i guess when we first met, it was a bad time for the both of us. we got into a really bad arguement and i never talked to her again until kat's birthday, back in september.

but jackie has been a big well of strength for me during all of this. when i've been depressed, she's made me push forward anyway. when i've been out of ideas, she's lent me some of her's. when i've almost considered giving up, she's kicked me in the ass. i really appreciate it.

it was the arrival of jackie that definately changed the course of things for me. jackie (and in some respects, kathryn.) were both in my situation a year or so ago. school was a problem for the two of them. jackie (who also went to NOCCA for visual arts.) couldn't handle the stress of both schools, so she first quit NOCCA, then dropped out of regular school. kathryn stayed in school up until the very last day of her senior year, but her grades were barely under the mark for graduation. so the two of them left school, and maybe it was their bad influence that made up my mind.

ever since i left home (and really, since i started franklin) school has been a problem for me. i haven't understood how i could give the classes my all and still barely float. i've realized a lot of things through all of this. one of them is the fact that school is designed for the average in mind. the outliers (myself included) don't fit into that mold, so for us school is a problem. i'm probably more well-adjusted than most, because i'm sure that a good many of those high-school dropouts didn't leave because they were stupid.

i guess you can see what i'm getting to. i weighed my options. stay in school when it was causing me horrific pain (the stress of it really got to me. towards the end i started to lose my hair, i actually lost weight — i went from one-twenty to eighty pounds. when you are as small as me, that's a disasterous problem.) for as long as possible, or leave it, get my GED, work for a year, and then go to college. it made much more sense to me to do things this way. so i told my parents (they opposed vigourously, ofcourse) and in the end they finally allowed me to drop out. it's not like they had a choice, because i had already decided to stop going to school anyway. all i was waiting for was them to sign the paper, because i am a minour and i can't really drop out of school without their permission.

but that's all over and done with now. jackie and i have an apartment together, because she plans on going to the university in the fall and she needed to move out. i agreed to move in with her because i can't stay at kat's house forever, though i'm sure they'd try to convince me otherwise. i have a job; not the best of ones, but it's money either way. my stress levels are down considerably.

i've finally taken life into my own hands, and i like it. so i guess you can see why i don't resent my parents for what they did. i was a problem for them to raise, i know. i'm too loud to listen to authority when i disagree with it, especially the unwavering kind that they expected me to obey because they were my parents. i know things are easier for them too, since three kids in a house is a hard thing to handle. i'm an adult now. maybe not legally, but i don't think that matters. i've accepted responsibility for myself, i've started taking care of myself. in two weeks, i will be supporting myself. if that doesn't make me an adult, then i know many people older than eighteen who are still children.

so, when jackie and i move in to our apartment (it is gorgeous; two bedrooms, two bathrooms, with a fucking huge balcony. and my half of the expenses is only about four hundred a month.), i'll start a whole new chapter of my life.

when i was a little child, i never could think this far ahead. my mind shut down when i tried to think several years ahead of me. i have to live in the moment. but i never expected to be where i am now, who i am now, none of it. i talked to one of my best friends from my old-old high school today. heather d. struck me totally by surprise by calling the house here, when i didn't expect it at all. we talked for a long time, and after i told her everything that had happened to me, she told me that she was proud of me and admired how i've handled things.

i don't think it's admirable. it's either sink or swim. it's either handle things or cry and complain and get swallowed alive. and i'm too much of a fucking fighter to let that happen.

so for all of you who feel sorry for me, don't be. the simple fact that i'm able to sit in front of this keyboard and type all of this up should be good evidence that i'm doing all right. because i am. i'm doing fine now, and i'll still be okay tomorrow.

goodnight, everyone.

Entry last modified: April 16, 2006 at 5:18 pm.

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